Microsoft and Rare has announced they will host a Sea of Thieves Technical Alpha test from December 16 to 18 with a series of scheduled playtests, and they will be inviting selected players from the Insider Programme to join them.

As with the rest of the Insider Programme, the contents of the Technical Alpha will be subject to the NDA all Insiders must agree to when signing up for the programme.

We’re powering into this phase of development with three main goals in mind:

1. We want to deliver on our promise to Insiders to help us test early game mechanics and services at a larger scale than anything we’ve delivered before.

2. We want to give our participating Insiders the opportunity to provide feedback about their experience.

3. We want to use this feedback and our data insights to make meaningful changes to our game.

Our first Technical Alpha play session will take place next weekend, from December 16th-18th. It’ll be available during several timeslots throughout the weekend, after which we’ll thank our participating pirates and give the servers a rest while we take on board everything we’ve learned, determining the best ways to apply it to Sea of Thieves’ development.

We’re overjoyed to see that thousands of eager gamers have already signed up for our Insider Programme, but the scale of the weekend’s session will be limited to around 1000 players only. This gives us the right scale and experience for our first test, and will allow us to focus closely on the feedback we receive. As we move on through the Technical Alpha phase, we’ll gradually increase the player base and frequency of sessions in line with the game’s evolution.